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Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Set Report Reveals Character Name and Shockwave?

Nelson has posted a set report from Chicago were he visited Michael Bay and the cast of Transformers 3 as they filmed in the city last Friday. As part of his post, he confirmed the name of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley's character as Carly. Carly is a familiar name for Generation One Transformers fans as the girlfriend and later wife of Spike Witwicky.

The set report is here (or below). With his report he also posted 12 images (including Bumblebee Hope poster) that show Bay, Tyrese and more as they did interviews and took time with the crowds that watched the filming over the weekend. The full photo is here. Pictures also mirrored at TFW2005. Thanks to NHLfan, Christopher, and Udana for the links.

The pictures posted at MB.com did reference the Ferrari as "Ferrari 458 Italia (Rush)" but then changed to "Ferrari 458 Italia (Parked on Rush St)" which does exist as it runs parallel to North Michigan Avenue. Sadly this means the Ferrari remains nameless.

In addition, TFW2005's sannman has posted another robot head figure that may or may not be Shockwave. It is very blurry so hard to tell but the assumption is based on what appears to be the pointy "ears" and maybe cyclops eye of the character. The red "helmet" though makes me wonder if this isn't the Ferrari since the color is close to its color. The rest of the photo set can be found here. Thanks to John D for the link.

Nelson here...

I arrived at the Chicago Michigan Ave. set on Friday, July 16th. I was greeted by Mike Case (Bay's assistant) and was taken to Bay's monitor tent which was in the middle of a war zone. Michael greeted and proceeded to ask some things about the site. He then took out his iPad and showed me animatics of some sequences. Holy moly. This movie is going to be huge!!! In my opinion, more epic than TF2 with the first time amazement of TF1. I wish I could tell you what I saw on the animatics, but I can't.

Bay was filming a scene with Shia (Sam) & Rosie (Carly) in which they were hiding within a wrecked and flipped car. At around that time the temperature hit 102 degrees (including humidity index). It was so hot that Shia was sweating through his leather jacket and as was Rosie. Back to the scene... apparently the scene is one in which a Decepticon is hunting for them. As Bay filmed this, a cue from the score was played to add to the suspense.

As the crew broke for lunch, I met Lester Speight (Coltrane on Gears of War) and went on to lunch with him. He was very nice and delightful.

Later, I got to meet the rest of the cast: Shia, Rosie, Tyrese, and Josh.

I had the pleasure of talking to Shia for for about 30 minutes and with Tyrese and Josh for another 30 minutes. All these guys have an impressionable work ethic, are fun to talk to and down-to-earth people. And that goes for the rest of the crew. I many many nice and professional people that are working their hardest to make this movie successful and entertaining.

As the day came about, Bay, Shia, Tyrese & Josh all came to meet than fans that had been waiting since 7am to catch a glimpse down the street. They also were interviewed by CBS 2 TV in which Bay praised the city of Chicago.

As always, Bay left the best for last. Explosions and gunfire!!

That's it for now. I will post a video of some of the activities later.

Enjoy.

Update: Altered post to reference that Rush is not the character name of the Ferrari.

I think that "shockwave" picture is a fake. It looks pretty poor...as if someone just photoshopped a concept art photo of shockwave. Plus there's no visible staff the head is attached to,unlike the previous photos of the heads of some transformers. If it is real, then im sure more photo's will arise soon.

hmm the SLS has German plates just like the mercedes.. im thinkin its an autobot. but just geussing here.

and that picture of "shockwave" definetley is a fake... it has no stick/pole to be held with, and the place markers FOR SURE dont have lights on them.. plus if it was real im sure we would have seen much more pictures of it. high resolution ones too.

It is obvious that if this is Michael Bay's last film of the series, he is going to be licking all the G1 fans asses, he will make a killing off of this movie possibly even more so than the second one.

Good to hear the action scenes are going well, but man even though my favourite film is transformers 1, there was too many unnessesary jokes, and transformers 2 had too many wierd robots. I hope this one at least cuts down on the bad humor and has at least a few good characters, no really ugly robots (twins, wheelie, jetfire, devastator,). I also dont want to see something like devastator failing to kill the twins again, it just devastator a joke. That said I think its going to be my favourite film when it comes out

@"Anonymous 7/20/2010 8:23 PM"--You are right but that doesn't look good for the movie. It's a sign of desperation if Michael Bay decided to use Carly.. a rushed script rewriting and a new love interest replacement using the Carly character in a hope for what? Does he really believe that long time fans will advertise the movie better thanks to Carly now and that so the general public will accept that sudden change in characters and the break in continuity and consistency over the previous two movies? The general public doesn't have a clue who Carly is. It's just too late to introduce Carly into the picture now. Was a love interest really necessary?

http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/zwecker/2512638,CST-FTR-trans20.article - This article had a few interesting quotes from Bay about the big action sequence they have been filming in downtown Chicago and where it fits into the movie.

I'm curious as to why you think that having the character be Carly is a sign of desperation. They needed a name for the character, and since the character's name really isn't all that important, why not use one that the fans will like? Sure, the name Carly won't be all that important to people who are only familiar with the films, but to geeks like me who have been fans since 1984, it's just a neat little bit of extra coolness.

Also, yeah, the love interest angle isn't really 100% necessary, but it is something that Bay uses quite frequently(as do many other directors). If done successfully, a love story subplot can actually add a great deal of dramatic tension to a film. I'm going to assume that TF3 will be similar in running time to the first two... say two and a half hours. That's plenty of time to introduce Carly and develop the relationship between her and Sam. Quite a few action films that are much shorter and have also used the same subplot and have done it quite well. Hell, the original three Indiana Jones films all had different love interests for Indy. For the most part and to varying degrees, all three of them were successful.

We don't really know yet what transpires between Sam and Carly. It may or may not work. Since we know so little about the film, we'll just have to wait and see.

@DarthMuppet: Sam Witwicky is a nerd more like Peter Parker. Comparing him to either Indiana Jones or James Bond it's just plain wrong I'd say, you know. And just like Peter Parker loved a girl since they were little kids, Mary Jane for Parker.. Mikaela Banes on Transformers movies... The general public doesn't have a clue who Carly character from comics and tv series of the '80s is. They already introduced the love interest which was Mikaela Banes. Now it's going to look desperate and redundant to have him fall in love with a new girl and name her Carly. This is not going to make any smoother the general public acceptance for the new topgirl playing the new love interest Carly, it's only going to make it look worse. They should have avoided any new love interest and that's it. All of this simply shows that the sudden script rewriting to force the topmodel in the movie playing a new love interest is a cheap thing and is not going to work as they expected.. otherwise they wouldn't have to resort trying the Carly thing in a hope that the general public will forget Mikaela..

I wasn't trying to compare Sam to Indiana Jones. I only mentioned that trilogy to make a point about how it is possible to introduce a new love interest in a film series and have it work. Seriously man, please stop being so damn obtuse!

I honestly don't think Bay and Co. named the new girl Carly for any other reason than the one I already stated. They needed a name and there was a G1 name readily available, so hey, why not? Casual fans and the general public won't bat an eyelash at it, but old school fans will get where it comes from.

Also, it is possible for a character(even a somewhat nerdy one like Sam) in a film series or trilogy to have more than one love interest... especially when the first one was introduced when the character was a teenager. Having Sam in a new relationship is actually a fairly realistic scenario. As someone who is in their mid-thirties, I can tell you from experience that couples who fall in love as teenagers almost never stay together for more than a few years.